After a long and busy weekend and past week of finalizing my presentation and also grounding out a few issues, now comes the task of finishing the documentation. Along with this, I'm also slowly preparing for my project defense in which this project will be looked at and scrutinized. I'm going to be updating this site with many more project files and also proofreading to make sure that everything is done.

More updates and changes to come as things are added. An outline has been drawn up and the most noteable changes will happen to the Project's page.

Progress made at fully finalizing the system and I'm feeling pretty confident rolling into the final bits of debugging. It looks as though my structures and logic are holding and I've only had to make small changes so far. I've also resolved the issues that I was having with the AIU and reading from the buffer that was accessed by many items. Below is an updated to do list.

    - Modify speed limits on track layout
    - Add more magnets to trains to assist with AIU hits
    - Continue to test on multiple laptops
    - Get binder and other documentation materials - start to organize and outline

    - Finalize code documentation and write-up support for logic
    - Finalize presentation powerpoint

This weekend I did a lot of work on finalizing the code within my project and wrapping all of these concepts together. Things are looking great with the client being able to receive updates from the server when railroad items change, commands are able to be sent from the client to the server, and the structures are staying in place and allowing things to change.

Although all of this is great, I'm still having a few last minute issues with the buffer being cleared by the two different reads that are happening and issues occuring because the other 'Read' issue is timing out. I just need to just finalize a few other little things and also modify it to do the speeds appropriately as the values are off to make things work well. I have posted a video of things working on my 'Project' page and will just work this week on testing things out and documenting.

Let's hope that no big issues come up and the track doesn't fall apart...

Final To Do:

    - Modify speed command to speed = speed + 40 but still display same
        > 50=10, 60=20, 70=30, etc.
    - Modify reads from serial port to only be done by AIU
        > AIU will capture success/failure reads but get past this with counting items put into array to make sure only set size
    - Modify speed changes to unblock if direction changed and increase/decrease speed: right now only unblocking
    - Issue train stop when user disconnects
    - Issue train stop when train is removed
    - Issue mass train stop when server closes
    - Text color for listView1: modify to read easier
    - Modify speed limits on track layout
    - Add more magnets to trains to assist with AIU hits
    - Modify journal headers to nice graphics
    - Continue to test on multiple laptops

    - Outline documentation and finalize code documentation
    - Finalize presentation powerpoint

Work continues on adding features to the client and server.

I have been working on the AIU processing for the Server and this has been updated so that it now appears to get almost all of the hits without a miss. I have also updated actions for the server with logs so now they may be saved and also or printed through the application. Beyond this, processing connects and disconnects has also been updated with changes to ownership being the last thing that is needed for the server.

For the client, I have modified this program so it now does all of its major input and output actions. It has been set up to connect when there is an available train and receives relevant information and can send generic requests to the server. All that is left to be done here is for it to now receive updates from the server and more testing.

All in all, I have taken more pictures and a bit of video to show things with the railroad. Hopefully this stuff will be posted shortly and documentation and finalizing these few areas are more goal for this week. Next week will hopefully just be used for testing and finalizing my presentation.

FINALLY!!!!

After spending several hours working on the AIU and modifications to my program, things are finally looking up. It's interesting how frustrating this project can be and then how thrilling it also becomes when something works the way it is supposed to. It turns out the AIU issue was a combination of different things: a read needs to be issued after all commands sent to the railroad as a message is sent back on whether or not it was successful, reads need to be done 1 byte at a time to get the 2 bytes (not sure why but this correctly grabs the bytes), and some logic modifications were made to review received info.

With this, I am now able to get sensor information and it doesn't appear to get jumbled up in other railroad commands like switching turnout or speed of trains!!! This is huge as that was one of the issues with the other programs and something that has continued to be a challenge. The next step is to look into getting this information successfully all of the time as it appears to miss some sensors every once in awhile pending speed. I also will have to work on modifying my program and controlling structures with ownership as the trains move along.

This is very exciting and now more of the intensive work will have to be done as well as error checking as I'm getting some sort of message when I try to close my program every time.

Today I met with Dr. Pankratz to see where I was with my project and find out where I stood with the finished product. I have been having a lot of issues with the AIU processing but it at least appears that the turnouts and train are able to move. This is great progress but most of my project relies on the AIU's to work so that I can figure out where the train is moving and visually show its transition. This is very event driven and is still something that I want to keep attached to my project so that if this gets figured out, it can be implemented and will be useful for later iterations.

With this in mind and frustration with the AIU, Dr. Pankratz has brought up the idea of using my program to almost act as a simulator. In this, I can simulate that a sensor is tripped by doing some behind the scenes calculations with time and speed of the train. I can then manually 'trip' a sensor and verify that my program correctly responds to this change. This is a great idea and is something that I probably should have implemented and tested further. This will most likely be the design if I can not get the AIU's working correctly and seems plausible to accomplish.

This weekend I will be putting in a lot of time to see if I can get the AIU's working by trying a series of things that Dr. Pankratz suggested and hopefully good news will come shortly. I will also be doing some maintenance on the track and can't wait until my computer is back to work on some aesthetic issues with my program that are driving me crazy. Updates will come shortly pending work this weekend.